Sci-fi Comedies

The closest thing to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy I can think of is Robert Sheckley's Dimension of Miracles, which, in fact, probably served as an inspiration for Adams when writing The Guide.
 
If it hasn't been mentioned The Road to Mars by Eric Idle is very funny.
 
If you like Douglas Adams, you might like to give Terry Jones a try. He wrote a book called Starship Titanic from an Adams outline, when Adams didn't have time to write it himself.
 
manephelien said:
If you like Douglas Adams, you might like to give Terry Jones a try. He wrote a book called Starship Titanic from an Adams outline, when Adams didn't have time to write it himself.

They made a really dreadful adventure game out of that book. *Shudder*

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I think it has already been mentioned, but the Phules series by Robert Asprin (Same guy who did all the fantasy humour Myth books) is reasonably funny.
 
The Mamoth book of Seriously Comic Fantasy ISBN: 1-81419-089-6 is quite a good anthology of 24 comic short stories. I particularly like "The top 50 things I'd do if I ever become an Evil Overlord" condensed from a website. Google evil overlords, I am not allowed to post URLs yet.
Like all anthologies, some are better than others but it will give you a good list of authors to look out for.
 
Try Good Omens by Terry Prchett and Neil Gaiman, very funny.

Aslo the Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Dian Wynne Jones
 
Ron Goulart not mentioned?:confused:
Ron Goulart wrote some funny space detective type books. Spacehawk Inc.
alot of his stuff was humorous.:p

Best, Merritt
 
I enjoyed the John Carpenter movie "Dark Star", more ideas than you can shake a stick at.
 
Recently read The Witches of Karres. Dated wasn't so much the problem as the whimsy and the parody. I tend to find it irritating as it is impossible to believe in.

China Mieville said it better than I could in his recent Locus interview (Nov 2006):

"It's obviously a fuzzy set -- one person might say Lewis Carroll was whimsical, while I don't see him that way-- but certainly at an adult level I tend to find whimsy cloyingly antifantastic. I think the fantastic is about surrendering yourself to impossibility, and whimsy is always winking. You could almost say it's self-loathing fantasy. I feel the same way about much metafiction (though again there are exceptions): the whole point of such writing is to pull you out of the fantastic.

"With whimsy, a certain type of complicity between the reader and the writer seems to me based on mocking the fantasy of the work. The fantastic is being forced to perform for a bigger kid in the playground, and everyone pretends they're getting along fine, when actually the little kid is getting bullied. That's where it bleeds into metafiction -- that sense of people peering over the pages. It presumes a stable ground between writer and reader from which you can both peer in and snigger at the facts of the book, and I think that's a rather dangerous presumption. What satire does is take things so far that it becomes clear the extremes are there to make a critical point. It doesn't just quietly assume a common ground; it insists upon a common ground and says, 'we're gonna stand here and mock this thing that's absurd.' It has the honesty to actually state the ground on which it stands and from which it comments -- which is to admit that all such ground is contested. Whimsy doesn't."

Bravo!
 
Nearly all of L. Sprague de Camp's sf work tends toward humor, whether it be irony, satire, or outright slapstick. And, of course, there's Eric Frank Russell, who often specialized in humorous sf; most of his best is in short story form, and his stories have been collected together in large omnibus volumes now that should be available through libraries or by order. As with Pratchett and some of the others, there's an underlying serious point to much of Russell's work, but the stories can be enjoyed just for the humor itself.


I still believe that Russell's short story "A Study in Still Life" has to be one of THE definitive satires of beurocracy ever written - inspired!
 
Some good suggestions above.

If you're really really into humorous SF you could scrape the barrel a bit with The Galaxy Game by Phil Janes.

Just don't don't don't, (did I mention don't?) waste any money or time reading Colin The Librarian or it's sequel. I don't think I've ever read a worse book!
 
Definitely read any of Spider Robinson's Callahan books. Weird humor, bad puns...

Also, check out anything by William Tenn, one of the genre's foremost satirists. (I can't believe no one mentioned him!) And Martians, Go Home by Fredric Brown. Not the zany stuff you'd find by Douglas Adams, but definitely funny.

Mike Resnick's The Outpost is very funny, as is an appropriately named anthology that he edited, My Funniest (apparently, volume two will be out soon).
 
"Phule's Company," and it's sequel, "Phule's Paradise," are an excellent starting point. Aspirin also wrote a fantasy series starting with "Another Fine Myth," which is well worth a look.
 
I've only read one book in the Samurai Cat series, but it was pretty amusing, as in downright surreal.
 
Also, check out anything by William Tenn, one of the genre's foremost satirists. (I can't believe no one mentioned him!) And Martians, Go Home by Fredric Brown. Not the zany stuff you'd find by Douglas Adams, but definitely funny.

Okay... yes to the Robinson and the Resnick, but the Tenn... How on earth could I forget????:eek: If nothing else, "Bernie the Faust" is an absolute gem!
By all means, pick up anything by Tenn (Philip Klass) that you can. Fortunately, his work is pretty easy to come by, usually, and here's a brief bibliography:

William Tenn - Summary Bibliography

Once again, thanks, Dr. A! (I think I need the Tin Man's oil can for my brain....):eek:
 
Don't sweat it, J.D. -- I try not too think too hard these days because the creaking noise hurts my ears...

NESFA Press put out a collection of all Tenn's short stories (as well as his essays and letters). Three volumes, hardcover. Worth picking up, especially for the comments he includes after every short story. Check out the NESFA website to order them, I guess. Amazon, etc., probably carries them, too.

I've got a soft spot for Tenn, as he was the first person I interviewed for my book. In subsequent months, he'd phone me once in a while to ask for various favors -- record this off the internet, find pictures of that, etc. -- and in return, I'd get to bug him for an hour or so, getting funny stories and weird anecdotes. (80% of which I wasn't allowed to print!) I haven't talked with him in a couple years, and I'm reasonably certain he doesn't remember me at all. ;)
 
There are a couple, at least, of fantasy short story anthologies edited by Peter Haining:

Amazon.co.uk: The Wizards of Odd: Comic Tales of Fantasy: Books: Peter Haining

Amazon.co.uk: Knights of Madness: Books: Peter Haining

I bought the first one because it had "Theatre of Cruelty" in it, a short story by TP which I'd never read, but they both have a mixture of new and old authors including[FONT=Arial, Helvetica] Lord Dunsany[/FONT], John Collier, Henry Kuttner, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stephen Donaldson(!), F. Anstey, James Branch Cavell, Fredric Brown, Robert Bloch, Brian W. Aldiss, Avram Davidson, H.G. Wells, C.S. Lewis, Reginald Bretnor and [FONT=Arial, Helvetica]Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Well worth getting - seems like the most unlikely people wrote at least one humorous story!
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